Fibre channel is the name of an integrated set of standards being developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Fibre channel is a hybrid channel and networking data transport medium.
Fibre channel topology can be selected depending on system performance requirements or packaging options. Possible fibre channel topologies include point-to-point, crosspoint switched or arbitrated loop. In any of these fibre channel topologies, SCSI storage devices, such as hard disk storage devices and tape devices, can be used to store data that can be retrieved by a software application. In order to save or retrieve data from any particular storage device, that device must first be located.
Conventionally, fibre channel storage devices have been directly attached to a fibre channel I/O bus on a server. Thus, to discover the SCSI device, the server with an application on it can scan its fiber channel I/O buses to discover what storage devices are attached and the application can determine whether the storage device is compatible with the application.
With the relatively recent development of storage area networks incorporating storage routers, locating both the router and storage devices associated with that router presents some challenges. In a storage area network, the I/O bus is geographically distributed throughout the storage area network. Storage routers, to which the storage devices can be locally attached, can be moved from one physical location to another depending on the needs at various times. This change in physical location of storage routers (and thus change in physical addresses) presents problems in locating both the storage router and storage devices in the storage area network.